Games of the future at CES 2020

By Luke HopewellFebruary 3, 2020

The game has changed. This year’s CES showed off new form factors and wild new ways to play. Here are the three trends we saw and loved.

Games on your face

Impressed with Nreal’s new AR glasses. This is what Apple is aiming for, but these plug into an Android phone. The new UI is super polished – and $499 blows away higher prices from Hololens, others. Critical to see if it gains an ecosystem. pic.twitter.com/4kpfsmBOV5

Nintendo’s Switch revolutionised mobile gaming with a nifty
handheld that also becomes a fully-fledged console for your TV. Now that the
console has experienced incredible success, other manufacturers want to get in
on the portable form factor, specifically for PC gaming.

Alienware showed off an incredible concept at CES called the UFO: a handheld gaming PC with an 8-inch screen and detachable controllers for fully-portable mobile gaming.

It’s not going into production just yet, but Alienware says
that its designers have already invested thousands of hours making handheld PC
gaming feel just right, and we think they’re onto something!

If you still want your gaming to feature a keyboard and
mouse, your experience is set to get way more portable in the future.

Gaming rigs typically pack in an incredible discrete graphics card (or GPU), but all this graphic performance sacrifices portability. If you’re looking for a laptop that can do what a desktop gaming rig does but still can slip inside a backpack, you’ll love the new Lenovo Legion external GPU.

An eGPU outsources the job of intensive graphics processing
to an external box that plugs into your laptop when you want to game. This way
you can have a thin and light laptop during the day while still having a fast
gaming computer when you need it!

Having it all

Of course, you don’t always have to choose your platform. What if you wanted PC gaming and console gaming in the one box? With Origin’s Big O machine, the dream is a reality.

Originally outed as a concept last year, Origin is now
flogging its incredible custom gaming PC that crams a console of your choosing
into the one impressive gaming box that sits on your desktop. That makes it the
perfect gaming PC – if we can even call it that now – to sit alongside the TV
in your lounge room.

Unfortunately, you do have to make a choice between having an Xbox or PlayStation version in the same machine, as the two still don’t get along under the same roof. But with the monstrous machine starting at $2499, you can probably still afford to pick up another for cheap.

Luke Hopewell is an editor, tech expert and Senior Specialist Writer at Telstra Exchange. Luke joined Telstra in 2019 where he has had the privilege to help bring stories to life in a unique and human way. He was previously the head of editorial at Twitter Australia and the editor of cult tech site Gizmodo. For over a decade, Luke’s passion for technology has always driven him to seek out the latest gadgets and game-changers, and help others to understand how it all works. In another life he was a cyber security specialist where he sought to educate people about how to stay safe online. When he's not writing, he's getting outdoors and patting all the nice dogs he meets.